


Bitter Pill

by DaScribbla



Category: The Night Manager (TV), The Night Manager - Jean Le Carré
Genre: Betrayal, Mild Stockholm Syndrome, Multi, Revenge, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 03:39:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8605843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: The hardest part, Roper reflected, was admitting to himself that he’d gotten it wrong. There was no room for incorrect decisions in this line of work.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Look who's back again...  
> This is essentially a marriage of the book and the television show. Basically think the show, but with the book's ending (AKA, how it should have been).  
> Thanks, as ever to mjolnir-s-master for being a goddamn enabler. You're the best.

The hardest part, Roper reflected, was admitting to himself that he’d gotten it wrong. There was no room for incorrect decisions in this line of work, let alone guesswork, but he’d allowed himself to dabble in both. Perhaps he was getting old. This business was a young man’s game. Or… perhaps not. Young men, like the one slumped in the chair before him in the lowest deck of his boat, got lost. They were impulsive; they got caught. Like taxi drivers in third world countries: go with the old ones because there’s a reason they’ve made it this far. 

Still. Of all the bloody people. Jonathan bloody Pine.

Roper sat back and studied what was left of the man he’d known. There was a neat symmetry in the way that the first and last that Roper would see of him would be his battered, dripping face. He just wished that the man had chosen some other way to get close. Staging a rescue of his own bloody son. Displacing his own bloody second-in-command. Worming his way into Roper’s bed, in multiple senses -- although he was _quite_ willing to focus merely on his mistress’s indiscretions for the moment. And somehow, between ingratiating himself with everyone and charming Jed out of her lace panties, Pine had still found the time to inform on him to the Brits. Roper didn’t even have the distinction of being sold out to MI6; instead, they’d sent a volunteer from some side organization no one had even heard of. The indignity stung. 

But he had him now. They’d nipped this particular blossom quite early, thank -- well, _God_ seemed rather presumptuous, didn’t it? Richard Roper was not a religious man, but only because he couldn’t find the logic in worshipping an entity he considered more or less an equal. If anything, God and the Devil were business partners; and if he could find a way to make under-the-table deals with both, so much the better. Spread the risk, as it were.

Now Pine groaned, and Roper’s mouth formed a thin line. Tabby and Frisky had beaten him largely unconscious, which Roper had no objection to -- hell, if he had the inclination, he likely would have done it himself -- but the soda-up-the-nose trick seemed, in hindsight, to be overkill. As it were. Still, hearing him scream had been its own special sort of reward.

With his head tilted down around the regions of his shoulders and chest, the shadows were enough to conceal the worst of his injuries. Roper wondered what Jed would think if she could see him now. Probably wouldn’t care. Likely, she’d boss the others into untying him and lowering a lifeboat down for them.

A wet, raspy intake of breath, and the legs of the chair squeaked just a little on the floor as Pine jerked into wakefulness and saw Roper. The whites of his eyes seemed unusually bright given the general ruin that was his face. 

“You know,” Roper said conversationally, “I think that this is all a damn shame. You were good.” Pine was breathing hard and giving his all to hide it. A lesser man might have been fooled. But Roper knew panic when he saw it. The overhead lights, kept intentionally dim, were just enough to illuminate the dark stain of saliva around the gag in his mouth, as well as some darker stains. Pine seemed to have bitten down hard enough to make his gums bleed. Or perhaps he was losing teeth. 

Roper dragged his own chair forward so that he sat directly in front of the other man, who was trembling slightly. Whether it was from rage or fear was anyone’s guess. Roper resisted the urge to analyze.

“You know, it occurs to me that you haven’t been remotely clever about any of this.” He cocked his head to the side, gauging his prisoner’s reaction, but there was nothing to see. “That cock-and-bull effort to rescue my son from two cartoonishly wicked, _wicked_ men? Please. And then with that hotelier’s sense of charm. And going after Jeds, now, that’s one thing. Going after me? That’s the mark of a man with an agenda.”

He reached out and stroked a hand through Pine’s hair. It was appealing to watch him struggle away from the touch, but fail to escape it. He traced his fingertips down over the shell of Pine’s left ear, slowing around the lobe, which he rolled between his thumb and forefinger. Discomfort showed plainly in Pine’s face.

“And yes, for the record,” Roper said, “I do know about you and Jeds. You two weren’t remotely clever about that either. What was it? Sexy phone calls in Istanbul, trunks down in the pool at Mallorca? Thank God _I_ never swam in there.” A smirk pulled at one corner of his mouth. “Is that a blush, Mr. Pine? Dear me. I’ve shocked the unscrupulous.” It was mostly bluffing, that part. There was no way in Heaven or Hell that Roper would ever be able tell if Pine were blushing or smiling or anything. “I do have to give your people some credit,” he added. “I didn’t see you coming at all. You don’t look a spy. You look a damned pretty boy. Well. You _did_. Tabby and Frisky have done for that now, haven’t they? Brutes. Wouldn’t know real beauty if it slapped them in the face.”

His hand drifted down the side of Pine’s neck -- bruised skin showing in a rainbow of blues, purples, browns, and greens -- and hovered over his jugular for just a moment. The tip of his index finger dipped into the loosened collar of Pine’s oxford that he’d somehow kept, and into the hollow of his throat. Roper licked his lips and moved his hand to Pine’s thigh. 

There were no tears, or shying away, or maidenly blushes. Pine was an army man, foremost, and given their history together, it was unlikely that he would be flustered at this coming from Roper of all people. And it was in some ways a relief to see a lack of tears or discomfort. Being under no illusions, he’d done his best to keep a weather eye on Pine while he was trapped down in the hold. Corky was under orders to keep _out_. Roper wanted to see Pine pay, but every man had to draw the line somewhere. 

No tears, no shying away, no blushing. Just a flat stare with those bright, bright eyes. Cool cucumber. 

“I know you now.” Pine just kept looking at him. “I thought I did before,” Roper continued. “The man who saved my child couldn’t possibly have any designs, could he? Howromantic of me, I know. You see --” and he took his hand away entirely, crossing his arms -- “when I fucked you, I thought I knew everything I had to. You were a pretty face and a mind that was nimble, but not too much so. But now… well. I don’t think anyone knows us quite as well as the people who hurt us. And that means that by now you and I know each other very well indeed, don’t we?”

Pine closed his eyes and breathed in and out, a steady sound not unlike that of the waves lapping at the sides of the boat. His throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“When I _fucked_ you,” Roper continued, putting a harsh emphasis on the word and privately relishing the mostly imperceptible look of unease that crossed Pine’s face as his eyes flew back open, “I thought I’d reached some sort of pinnacle. Nothing would ever get better than having your pretty lips wrapped around my --” He paused delicately. “Well. No point in divulging the past, is there? Particularly when _this_ , in our current predicament, is so much more satisfying.”

And he stood and slapped him. His knuckles cracked into Pine’s already-abused cheek, knocking his head sharply to the side. He did not exactly cry out, but his eyes filled with tears and his breathing came in ragged starts. Roper couldn’t quite tell, but it seemed as though he’d gone pale.

Roper cradled the cheek that he’d struck in his hand and bent close to his ear.

_“Shh, shh, shh, shhhhhh…”_

A small sob, almost inaudible. And then Pine nuzzled his cheek against his hand. 

But his eyes told a different story; Roper did not think he’d ever been subject to a look of such pure loathing before. From Jed, perhaps. She despised him too. They all did. But Richard Roper hadn’t made it to where he was by caring if others liked him. It was a cruel, materialistic world into which they had been born, and Roper looked at other people to see what they could do for him. 

So why was he so enraged that Jonathan Pine had done the same, precise thing to him?

He pulled his hand away and turned his back to him, studying his nails. There was blood on the cuff of his jacket. How typical. Marking everything, in that sloppy, careless way. Like he had with his sheets and Jed’s clothes.

It was difficult to say what possessed him, but Roper turned back around and slapped him again. Perhaps it was just to watch Pine’s head snap about like that, carried by its own weight and the force of his hand. It made him feel better. 

_Slap. Slap. Slap._

Here came the tears, more likely out of pain than anything else, but Roper couldn’t resist the chance to press his lips into Pine’s matted, blood-streaked hair, and murmur that _betrayal is a bitter pill, isn’t it?_

Pine’s sobs followed him up the steps that led onto the main deck -- along with a few muffled syllables that sounded suspiciously like _wait_ , or perhaps _come back_ \--until the sound of the ocean drowned them out. The wind was picking up. 

“Looks like we’re in for a bit of weather,” he remarked to Tabby.

“Just so, sir.”

“You might as well take him  his dinner. Oh, and do make sure our guest isn’t sick on himself or anything. Wouldn’t want him to lose his sea legs, under the circumstances.”

“Yessir.”

“Oh, and Tabby?” Roper scratched the blood on his cuff, to no avail. It seemed to have soaked into the fibers of the jacket itself. “Lay off him for tonight, would you?”

“Yessir.”

Roper walked to the edge of the railing and stared out at the dark waves. In cabins all over the boat, guests were readying themselves for another evening of monotonous entertainment. In one of them, Jed was undoubtedly pulling on her evening dress and plotting Roper’s demise. Plotting, plotting, plotting. It was all anyone seemed able to do on this damned boat. 

Footsteps behind him. He didn’t turn, just waited for whoever was to speak.

“Sir?” Tabby, back from the hold, sounding a bit uncertain. “He won’t stop bawling.”

“‘Course he won’t,” Roper said, more roughly than he’d originally intended. He was clenching the railing hard enough to turn his knuckles a bony white. He smiled sickly. “I’m the worst man in the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @williamshakennotstirred.


End file.
